Its Always Darkest Before The Dawn
by champagnewellies
Summary: Making decisions as a team had never been something that came naturally, protecting the ones you love however is something totally different.


**So i'm not really sure I even like this all that much, I truly didn't intend for it to turn out quite as romantic and out of character as it did, but what can i say my inner tiva shipper just comes out at all the wrong times. Anywaaay, I had the idea when I was out riding and it just wouldn't go away and leave me alone to finish writing the next chapter of _Regrets Collect Like Old Friends_, so yeah i'm glad this is out of the way at least and I can actually focus, oh and thankyou for reading and humoring my incessant babbling. :) **

* * *

><p>Forcing herself to remain on the tarmac as they boarded that plane was possibly the hardest thing she had ever done.<p>

All that she had encountered in her significantly short life had been nothing compared to allowing her team to walk away. Allow them to leave her behind believing they couldn't trust her, that they were second best and she had known all along that whatever messed up arrangement they had was temporary even if they had forgotten.

It was to be her last stand, to erase everything they thought they knew about her, the memories of the previous four years, to make them look weak while she stood strong and unyielding. A cold empty shell designed to do one man's bidding.

She had to make them hate her. And maybe then they could move on, forget her and find someone new. A new member of the team, who was born and raised American, who wasn't suffocated by the scars of their past, someone who wouldn't be forced on them but they would choose to sit at her desk, and ride alongside them to crime scenes and pick up take-out food after a particularly long case, someone completely different to her. To this day the thought sent a shiver of uneasiness down her spine. But she had been sure that this was the only option, for if they hated her then the sting of her betrayal would not be met by sadness, but by bitter anger. A bitter anger that in the long term would disappear faster and they could all move on with their lives.

A small part of her had hoped that one day when she was long dead they would understand. They would understand why she stayed, and realise that the choice was clawing at her insides. The temptation to inform at least Gibbs of the reasons for her actions was nearly as overpowering as the sight of the jet sitting, engines running, waiting to take them from her. But she couldn't put it into words, couldn't burden him further with the task of evaluating when McGee and in particular Tony would be ready to hear the truth. He no doubt would see her excuses as lies and broken attempts at a slight reconciliation. All she could hope for when Gibb's looked in her eyes for what they presumed was the last time, he would see the regret, the longing to join them. But the mask was firmly in place, cutting off any emotion from her features, and she knew as he turned from her that he hadn't seen it. Ironically the only person, who may have had a hope at seeing through the icy cool exterior, was the one person she could not bear to see, because if anything would break her resolve it was him.

It had taken everything she had to not break down as she watched that plane take off. She had been trained for this, to stand by idly as your world crumbled around you. Showing emotion would get you killed, and actually acknowledging it was even worse. Emotion was a distraction, get rid of it and you would be stronger, quicker minded. A robot. This is what they wanted. The only emotion that remained in her early years of Mossad was vengeance, vengeance was the thing that kept her cold heart beating, driven by a determination to punish those who may or may not have had a link to Tali's death, to stop them hurting other families the way she herself had been hurt. NCIS had changed that.

The amount of time she had spent there was considerably short if you were to compare it to a lifetime. Yet still she had discovered emotions that had long been forgotten, ones she had not realised she was still capable of feeling. She had not allowed herself to care for anyone or anything in such a long time, not even the most trained operatives would be able to break through the thickly guarded defences she had in place, so how had the slightly erratic combination of people that she had learned to call her family smash through them without her even realising they had.

Coming to terms with some of the horrors she had witnessed and the ones she herself had had a part in nearly destroyed her. When an ex Mossad operative – the ones who were still alive anyway – finally came to terms with what they had done, the regret drove inwards, resulting in their self destruction. There was to be no escape from it. Yet NCIS had supported her through her own revelations, though she could not understand why.

They were all so different, yet they clicked together like a perfect puzzle.

McGee, the socially awkward yet loveable computer nerd, he was still so innocent when she had first met him, still so new to NCIS and the difficulties the job brought. Yet he had held his own, through his rookie mistakes, Tony's constant taunting, and being the physically weakest member of the team. He had grown into an outstanding agent, and was like her little annoying brother, someone who she didn't necessarily go to with her problems but she would do anything to protect. She knew this would change him, them all beyond repair once again but she still had hopes for him that he wouldn't be scarred by the job like the rest of them had, that he got married and have kids – he would make a great dad – preferably with Abby. She knew those two would get together eventually, possibly when McGee hung up his gun for good, which for his sake she hoped was sooner rather than later. She still wanted that for him, even now.

Abby the happiest most loveable Goth anyone would ever meet. Being down in the lab most of the time, Abby was spared the more disturbing sites of cases; even if she could handle hearing them Ziva doubted her sensitivity wouldn't suffer by actually seeing the bodies, the families and the murderers up close. This is was what Ziva loved about her. In a weird way, she reminded her of Tali, not by appearance but by her childlike innocence, Tali had been stripped of the chance to grow into full adulthood so she would never know, but she could guess that she and Abby would have gotten on very well. Of course this sensitivity meant Abby would be left devastated, would see it as betrayal, abandonment, and she would be right. She was abandoning them, just not for the reasons that they thought. She knew at the beginning that they had not got along at all, but she also knew why. Being Kate's replacement that was a curse in itself, she had hoped they wouldn't be as judging of _her own _replacement. Being the focus of Abby's anger and grief had not bothered her at the time, but that was old Ziva, the person she was now, well she knew for certain she would be slightly more affected. The thought of never being the victim of another of Abby's bone crushing hugs, going to her for results, sitting on the floor of the lab going through file after file with the rest of the team was enough to form a familiar lump in her throat.

Then there was Ducky, the man had given her so much guidance the past few years she had actually felt like she was losing so much by ending their friendship. She seemed to have the most in common with him. They both enjoyed the same things, could talk for endless hours, yet even he could not predict her actions. She was volatile, a time bomb, a manipulative killer that had fooled them all, that would no doubt be what he thought of her now.

She had never had a very outspoken relationship with Palmer, though she had loved the socially awkward assistant all the same. She hadn't known how he would react to her departure, he kept things very close to his chest, but she assumed alike the rest of them he would feel betrayed. She had wondered then if he and Ducky would stand and discuss her. Or would the subject remain unspoken of, not only in the bull pen but in autopsy too. Would she just become one of those distant memories, which they all may or may not recall years from now. The selfish side of her didn't want to be forgotten, the rational side knew this was how it had to be.

She was lucky. Having a network of people who did not condone what she had done in the past yet did not judge was her saving grace. Each of them making up the sections of her absent family.

To her, Gibb's would always remain as her father figure. He was demanding and stubborn yet caring at the same time. She knew he cared for each one of them a great deal, they too being the family that had been taken away from him. Like her Gibb's was unpredictable, a complete anomaly that couldn't be understand using the laws of physics, however she did know that he would take her betrayal hard. Not on the surface, no. To the outside world, he would appear the same as he always had, set, determined and dedicated. Only the people that knew him best knew that he would likely spending even more of his small amount of sleeping time in his basement drinking bourbon. Mourning the loss of yet another person, he had loved dearly and trusted. Shannon, Kelly, Jenny and now her. It was no wonder that he didn't accept new people easily, for if he got attached to yet another person, it was another person that could be taken away from him.

So yes hiding her emotions had once again become part of who she was. By locking yourself away, you couldn't get hurt, and you most definitely didn't have to continually blink away tears that blurred your vision the way they did as she watched that plane grow smaller in the distance. She was a coward. Because whilst anyone with courage would face their demons she was determined she would not. They were the strong ones, while she was weak.

But she had to do it, for them. For _him_.

Him. Tony DiNozzo, the goofy, movie quoting playboy, who somehow had wriggled his way under her skin and into her heart. She hated him for it. Hated the way he knew her better than anyone ever had, hated the way he could make her laugh even when she was at her lowest points, hated the way that after all these years the sight of him still give her butterflies, but most of all she hated the way that no matter what she did she could not help but to love him, and know without a doubt that he felt the same way too. But they could have never been something, not as long as she had her ties to Mossad and her father. It could never be. The events of the previous week were a perfect example of that. She couldn't punish him to the life that she led, constantly running from her enemies, from her own father, she had to let him go, no matter how much it hurt. She had to protect him, even if it meant losing him and the people she cared so much about. She saw no other way; she had to set him free.

Her plan was fool proof, though she hadn't counted on him doing everything he could to stop her.

Somalia was a punishment. She deserved every punch, every kick, each being her punishment for the people she had hurt in the aftermath of her actions. She almost welcomed it, if there was indeed an afterlife, a place where everything was perfect, she believed after this then surely she would be able to go there. Though in her eyes a place that wasn't something magnificent unable to be seen in a person's average life, perfect was all the way back in DC working with the team staring across the bull pen, and catching the eyes of a certain agent, before heading home - their home – maybe picking up their kids from school on the way. That was perfection, and something she had dreamed about for quite some time. She may have been stupid to think like that, because at the same time she hoped with all her heart and soul that he wouldn't be joining the afterlife for quite some time. She knew for definite that she was not _his _idea of perfection. But in those unbearable days, where time seemed to stand still, she needed something to hold onto.

She hadn't wanted to associate the few good memories she had with the torture that was inflicted upon her at the hands of Saleem, but as the endless days stretched into weeks, trapped in a dark, hot cell with barely any water for days on end, she figured she would never see the team again, they would never know she was here, why should she not think of them.

She had thought of each individual member of the team in turn. Recalling every minute detail she had ever known about them and imagining the things she would never learn. She tried to sort the best memories, the ones that involved thanksgiving at Ducky's house, going out shopping with Abby, spending summers drinking slushies in the bullpen trying not to be caught by Gibb's and working cases with the team and the feeling she got when they all knew they had done a good job. She saved those memories for when Saleem began to grow frustrated, his regime becoming more aggressive. His daily visits to her cell was the only way she could measure time, both how long she had been there and how long she had left. Considering the guy was a terrorist he was slightly easy to read, though his very unstable temper was a slight giveaway.

It wasn't until what she believed to be her final days that she allowed herself to think of the best memories. Memories of movie nights, correcting idioms and stakeouts, the types that you pretend otherwise but you know in your heart that they weren't to do with the actual event but the person you were with. Had she been in any other situation she would have been appalled that _he_ was the thing that kept her going, though she had no idea why she refused to give up the fight, to irritate Saleem a little too much, to simply give in and greet death. But he wouldn't let her.

She was curled into a feeble position on the dusty floor of her cell when Saleem slammed into her cell and placed a sack over her head. She had still refused to give any details about NCIS despite his constant efforts, she knew it was simply a matter of time before he killed her and had done with it. She had hoped that he wouldn't try to send her body back to them, the scars and bruises showing the extent of what had became of her when she did not have the team by her side. She wanted to shield them from that, from the world that they should have no part in.

As he marched her, pushing her down the corridor, unable to see, her legs barely able to support her drastically decreased weight, she realised that all along protecting them had been the thing preventing her death, and eventually would result in her bitter victory. Not giving the information Saleem wanted meant she would not die, but they would not harm her team and those she had grew to love either. Ultimately this is what she had decided, what she wanted the day she turned her back on them, it was fitting that this is how she would die, because she refused to allow Saleem to break her. He would not win.

She was ready to die. Ready to face whatever cruel slow method Saleem had prepared for her, she knew for certain the trouble she had caused him the past weeks meant her end would not be quick and painless.

The bag over her head had muffled her hearing as he slammed her downwards into a chair, but she could swear he was talking to another person in the room. She convinced herself it was her dehydrated, half starved state that was making her imagine things, for there was no reason for a person who had any connection to NCIS to be here.

Her eyes had blinked in the bright sunlight when the bag was tore from her; unlike her own this cell had a window that allowed more than just a few shafts of light through. And then she saw them, those eyes, those green eyes that she had thought of so often the past few months, the eyes she thought she would never see again. She expected to see anger, betrayal even hatred in them, but all she found was pain and such intense astonishment that practically flatten her.

She was imagining him, there was no other explanation. Perhaps she was already dead, or the severely injured, the life draining out of her slowly. This was what she wanted after all, to be able to see him one last time before she met death.

But he was real. He was bound, bloody and beaten. McGee left in a similar state on the floor behind her. She didn't mean for herself to sound so uncaring and heartless, yet she couldn't help it. Had she not been tied to the chair and exhausted she thinks she may have killed him herself for his 'chivalry' which basically was a suicide mission. All she had wanted was to protect them, to stop them from facing this side of the job that few ever saw. Yet of course he had to fight it, do exactly the opposite of whatever she did. She pushed he pulled. He could never just let it be.

"Couldn't live without you, I guess". Even in her weak state no other line could have flattened her quite like that one, make her rethink everything she had assumed about the team and the effects her leaving would have had. The chances of Tony or McGee making it out alive were minimal, yet they had purposely got themselves captured, just to avenge her death. Avenge the death of someone who had betrayed them. She knew the entire team refused to stop hunting Ari after Kate's death, yet she had been an innocent pawn in the game Ari and Gibb's had been playing.

She had never been a part of a team before, learning how to work as a unit had been a major difficulty in the beginning, and still four years later she was trying to interpret how they worked. One thing was painfully clear in this moment, no matter what she did, no matter how she betrayed them, they always would have wondered what had become of her, would have always ran searches – most likely illegal ones - to find out where she was, what she had been a part of, all for one and one for all. Nothing had ever been so obvious.

Tony. The mastermind behind the entire plan, the man who was willing to put his entire life and career on the line, simply to avenge her death, yet they all went along with it. She could see in his face that he still truly believed she hated him, the pain was overwhelming. The way she had left things between them had been the most heartbreaking of all. But she had known the second she saw the outlines of Tony and Michael fighting in her apartment that it was what had to happen. If he had died, it would have been her fault, she was the reason Michael was here, the reason Tony and the rest of the team had gotten involved with him even though she knew how dangerous he could be. If Tony had died, instead of Michael, she would have never been able to live with herself. She would have never been able to return to the team, seeing his empty desk every day, knowing it was her fault he wasn't there. She truly believed that this was for the best, cutting herself off from him, she hadn't realised that by doing so she was sentencing him to the same fate that she was trying to avoid.

She tried to imagine had it been the other way round, had it been Tony that stayed on the tarmac, Tony who they all believed to be dead. Would she have gone looking for his killer? Of course she would, no questions about it. Alone or with the assistance of the team she would have tracked down his killer and personally taken him down herself. She would stop at nothing because without him she was broken. That was why Saleem could not get anything from her, because there was nothing left, she was an empty shell without Tony present in her life. She had simply never realised that it was the same for him too.

Despite her own views of how _she_ would take down Tony's made up – and god did she hope it remained that way – killer, she was relieved when Gibb's was the one that fired the kill shot. Not because she preferred it that way, but rather she didn't want to see Tony do something stupid, like trying to take Saleem down with his hands quite literally tied behind his back, because when it came down to a to weakened NCIS agents one tied to a chair the other on the floor going against a crazed sociopath with a gun, well the odds of them getting shot were a great deal larger than them actually winning.

Making their way out was a great deal easier than she had thought. It was apparent the escape plan had a little more to it than scrambling a response team in the med. She had never been one to believe in revelation or life changing moments, looping her arms around both McGee and Tony's necks was the first friendly physical contact she had had in months, it made her feel safe and part of something again, yet it was the hand that clutched her own that practically stopped her in her tracks, had she not been being dragged already.

She couldn't understand why Tony had not picked up the knife that had been abandoned on the floor of the cell, instead choosing to hold her hand tightly in his own, squeezing it as they made their way through the camp, gun shots blaring out. To her it was the light at the end of the tunnel, she had been forced to take a course once about body language and how you could interpret actions, it was to help her be convincing undercover, yet she had taken more from it than she originally intended. Handholding in any sense was a sign of trust, a sign of pride that each person would have their eyes open yet would continue to cling to each other not caring about anything else. It was a sign that the two people could learn to love each other, though she realised that it wasn't falling in love with him that was the problem, it was learning to love him functionally, the working together then picking the kids up from school kind of functional. Suddenly the temperature in the camp felt as if it went up a degree.

The plane journey home was one of the longest of her life. She pretended to sleep, refusing to speak, yet Tony did exactly the same thing, so she made do with stealing glances at him every so often actually hoping he would catch her. This wasn't the Tony she knew, the Tony she knew would press and press until he got answers, found out what he wanted to know.

She was painfully aware that this is how it should have been months ago, that she should have just returned to DC with them there and then. She had to question if all of this would have been prevented though, she would have been forced to leave NCIS at some point, forced to return to Mossad. She knew now though that it's likely the team would have never allowed that to happen, would have fought for her till the very end, she just wished they hadn't had to make themselves targets in the process.

The ride in the elevator up to the bull pen was surprisingly comfortable, no need or desire to ask whether they were ok, where she would be staying or what she was going to now. They all knew the answers. NCIS was home to each and every one of them, they would try to protect each other and stand by one another through thick and thin. They were family and it would always remain that way.

The applause that filled the bull pen was muted to her ears as Abby pulled her into a hug, a little gentler than usual but it was her trademark all the same. But it was those damn green eyes looking at her from across his desk that had her in a jumble again. She had asked him once if he believed in soul mates, the person you were destined to end up with. He had never given her an answer, the look he gave her said it all, sometimes despite your best intentions you didn't necessarily end up with the person you were meant to be with. Though if she wasn't mistaken he had just staged a suicide mission to get _his_ back, they had broken each other too much for there to be anyone else, they would need time to heal, time to adjust and rebuild from what had happened. Knowing the stubborn streak each of them had they would no doubt try to ignore what they both had learned from this experience. They could try, but ultimately they would fail.

Staring into those eyes, she knew that the road ahead would be tough, but she knew that they could learn how to work again. For it's always darkest before the dawn.


End file.
